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Reviews and Notices

Items below are all available online at the great site Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers,
co-produced by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the
Library of Congress. So far there's nothing in the way of a critical
notice that I can find about The Confidence-Man (1857) in either the Herald or the Tribune. Most but not all of the critical notices below are transcribed or listed in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews (CR), edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker. As mentioned in the previous melvilliana post Early favorable notices of Typee and Omoo, CR lacks the New York Herald items about Typee and Omoo. Also not listed in CR: the notice and excerpts of "Israel Potter" in Putnam's, given in the New York Herald on August 6, 1854.

Married "In Boston, on the 4th inst., by the Rev. Dr. Young, Mr.
HERMAN MELVILLE, of New York, to Miss ELIZABETH K. SHAW, daughter of
Chief Justice Shaw, of the former place." --New York Herald - August 6, 1847

"CHARLES LE CHAUVE" in the New York Herald - September 4, 1853;
Notices among Berkshire celebrities "Herman Melville who, if he would
understand to write about the things of this world, would be as popular
as Dickens, but whose later works are such that neither gods nor men,
nor columns can tolerate. He lives at Pittsfield, and has a beautiful
place there."